Reminder of Forthcoming Event

"God's World": an evening with the Bishop of Reading exploring why and how to become an EcoCongregation.

At St John and St Stephen's Church, 121-147 Orts Road, Reading, RG1 3JN

Thursday 17th November, 7.30 - 9.30 pm.

Free entry, open to all denominations.

Bishop Andrew Proud will be speaking about his experience of the impact of climate change in Ethiopia.
There will be resources and stories from Berkshire EcoCongregations shared over fair trade refreshments.

Discover simple ways to help your church address the third and fifth marks of mission:

Responding to human need and safeguarding the integrity of Creation in the face of Climate Change, Peak Oil and a growing world population.

Please e-mail j.laynesmith@gmail.com for further details and to confirm your attendance so that we can provide enough refreshments.

Living Faith Worldwide

The Oxford diocesan Living Faith Worldwide conference on Saturday was a really excellent and inspiring day. There were bishops from Oxford's partner dioceses alongside speakers from SPEAK and USPG and some really interesting workshops. I had a four minute slot to talk about RCEL at the end of the day before the final worship. A strong message throughout the day was the importance of working for social justice as mission.

10th October meeting

Our last meeting was rather smaller than recently, perhaps unsurprisingly after the summer break. We finalised plans for the event with Bishop Andrew, discussed RCCP and other business and decided to try to support the current solar schools project by encouraging local churches to get involved. We also prayed for Owen Jewiss who set up the Churches Together Environment Group and has done a huge amount for the church in Reading but is currently very ill.

Solar Schools

A new project has been launched to help schools cut their carbon footprint and deal with increasing fuel prices by going solar. Excitingly five of the first eight schools are in Reading. The idea is for families, friends and local businesses to sponsor the tiles through a website provided by 10:10 and if the school can raise £5,000 by March then the first panels will go on before the feed in tariff rate changes. Each 'tile' only costs £5 and you can leave a message and a photo on it so please support them! Pick the school nearest you, or perhaps I can persuade you to choose New Christ Church Primary School where I happen to be PTA chair (I'll find a picture with more of the school on it some time!) - it would be great to help them on the way towards becoming an EcoSchool (they've got the bronze certificate so far).

More good news about renewable energy in Reading has just come out today on the BBC website: The Royal Berkshire Hospital will be one of five hospitals in England to receive NHS funding to produce its own electricity.

The Reading hospital will receive £5m from the Carbon And Energy Fund to install solar panels, wind turbines and a heat-driven mini power station.

Reading Town Meal

The Reading Town Meal last Saturday was a fantastic success with the hoped-for thousand people turning up in blazing sunshine. Not only did we get to eat free delicious food donated by allotment holders and schools in the Food4Families project but there were plenty of fun stalls too. The Abundance Project/Transition Towns stall was a particular favourite with my children who peeled, cored and sliced many apples with their ingenious machine and were very taken with Wokingham Transition Town's apple press, pictured here (and mentioned in an earlier blog entry).

Reading Climate Change Partnership 28/9/11

At the latest RCCP board meeting we were disappointed to learn that funding has been stopped for the LoCus project to help businesses negotiate energy efficiency measures with their landlords. However, good progress is apparently now being made with the Low Carbon Social Enterprise Project and on behaviour change research. The project to use money awarded to the LSP to put pv panels on community buildings is well under way so all the buildings identified as potential recipients are currently being surveyed. Much of the meeting was spent on planning an event in the new year to feedback what the partnership has been doing and begin progress towards the next climate change strategy.